


Peace and a gun

by Thene



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: F/M, Peace Walker, Serious Crack, fitness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-24
Updated: 2012-05-24
Packaged: 2017-11-05 22:05:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/411493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thene/pseuds/Thene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A very serious fic about BaraPaz.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Peace and a gun

**Author's Note:**

> I started this as a commentfic for [a fandomsecret about Barapaz being attractive](http://i52.tinypic.com/1060d94.gif), and then forgot about it for a few weeks before deciding to finish it. So, thanks to both the OP and also to the people in MGS Paintchat who created BaraPaz and who still keep our memes alive.
> 
> Spoilers for Peace Walker.

The first time she walked into Mother Base's weights room, she was stared at incredulously. Six men froze, or shuffled their feet, or gingerly set down their burdens.

"I am here," she said to the ensemble, "because I need to be strong. I've learned this, about peace. Peace comes easier if you look stronger than your enemies. I won't have nukes," she formed an expression of girlish indignation, "but if I can learn physical strength, no one will attack me." What you had, you did not need to use. That was the principle of deterrence.

The first day, she merely observed the soldiers as they exercised, watching muscles bunch and strain, almost visibly growing as the sweat beaded on their skin. She watched everything they did. The second day, she wore her swim bikini and a pair of shorts she'd borrowed from Cecile, and she walked to the rack of barbells. She took the smallest pair, ignored at the end of the row. Three pounds, the stamp said. That was barely more than the weight of a gun.

 

Kazuhira Miller accosted her on the fourth day. She was hefting the ten-pound weights. 

"Hey, Paz," he said, all charm and consideration for the gentle lady. "I heard you'd been coming here to train."

She nodded. The other men had learned to ignore her. She simply did what they did; curls, squats, rubbing sweat from her eyes, feeling her arms burn, resting to drink water. "If Costa Rica is to stand alone, perhaps every Costa Rican must be her own deterrent." In truth, she had perhaps missed physical training. She now woke up in the morning feeling almost as if her body were changing shape as she slept, skin pulling taut over her stomach, thighs narrowing and firming. Her cute school blouse felt too tight on her shoulders. She could barely move her arms in it. She'd have to ask Cecile for more clothes.

"That's great, Paz, but make sure you don't overdo your training. Try to vary your routine. Maybe you should come swim in the sea with me sometime?" She stared at him, innocent, as he eyed her bikini top and everything it barely covered. "Or you could join me in the sauna?" he suggested.

She shook her head politely, looking past him at the rack. Time to move on to the fifteen-pound weights.

 

She was wearing Amanda's shorts. Her muscular thighs no longer fit into Cecile's, or Huey's, or Strangelove's. Huey, fascinated by all things two-legged, had built her a rowing machine during the second week and made rapid notes and sketches as she used it. There wasn't a part of her that didn't feel full with tired strength, like a forest fire. The straps of her bikini strained against her back.

She counted her strokes, metronomic. Huey was talking to her. "The real problem with robots is that they have a limited ability to improve themselves," he said. "An AI can analyse offence patterns and figure out how best to counterattack, but it can't make its body stronger with repeated efforts. A robot body doesn't learn."

She nodded. _One hundred and ninety-seven, one hundred and ninety-eight_.

"Maybe there's some strengths humans have that just can't be replaced by technology. Every time I get convinced that humans are the inferior half of their partnership with machines, something happens to change my mind."

_One hundred and ninety-nine. Two hundred and nothing._ Her body now felt tough and inescapable, like a fortress. Not irreplaceable, though; nothing was irreplaceable to Cipher.

 

People had started coming to watch her. They were not obvious; they pretended to exercise, using toys that she had abandoned weeks ago. Between Snake's influence and Amanda's, MSF members tended to respect the women who lived among them. There were women among the watchers too. She was fascinating to all, a child with strength to match any of the men.

Being seen had always been part of her role. She was a false icon, built to represent as well as to intervene; her body's youth and fragility was part of her purpose, and an icon must be visible in order to do its work. She was fragile no longer. They looked at her and saw the strength of peace - and someone was always looking.

Cipher was always looking. She did not know whose eyes he looked through. Cipher had not ordered her to be strong.

When the urge to be unseen came upon her, she hid in her room until night, only venturing out when most of the soldiers were asleep, as was their routine. She then crept down Mother Base's hallways, listening to rhythmic sounds of the sea and of her steady footfalls. She opened the door of the sauna, and walked into the cloud of steam. It was ocean-water filtered and vaporised, droplets forming all over her skin and her hair.

She smelt the smoke mingling in the cloudy air, and stepped towards it. 

Big Boss's presence always came before him; smoke-blood scent, an ideal with a silhouette. The unlucky never saw the real man at all. But Paz was not deterred. She sat beside him silently, and reached for the cigar in his hand.

He allowed her to take it from him, but grunted at her as she inhaled from it. "That stuff'll stunt your growth."

She laughed. "I have always been - stunted, as you say. Small and helpless." She gave it back to him. The tobacco felt foul in her lungs, but perhaps it took a little poison to become stronger.

"You're getting older, Paz." She nodded. She was twenty-something-or-other, she thought; her date of birth was not recorded. "You've changed a lot since I met you."

"I do only what I have to do for peace," she replied. She made the last two words sound especially saccharine. "Do you not like these changes?"

"I can't complain." His naked thigh brushed against hers; thicker and equally hard, anaconda to her boa. There was a future in which Cipher controlled all weapons and all soldiers. She supposed that in that future, everyone would have Big Boss's body. Her strenuous efforts to emulate it would become outmoded. But in the heat of the sauna, she felt a quiver go through her at his acknowledgement of her body, his approval, the understanding that it was a body like his own. "Staying strong enough to fight...that's always been part of who I am."

She felt him look at her. He had come close to realising the truth, that she was preparing to fight. She could write peace on the skin of this body and it would still look like a lie. She had no choice now - soon she must fight him, or fight Cipher, which was to fight everything. She reached again for his hand, wrapped two parted fingers around the cigar and tossed it away.

She gripped his fingers, wanting him to feel the strength of her. When the time came, would he offer her his surrender? 

She squeezed his hand hard, as if to crush the lie that she had ever come to bring him peace. And he - he squeezed back.


End file.
